AA Milan Visiting School, Architecture, ecoLogicStudio Italy, 2013

AA Milan Summer School : Architectural Association Event

Architectural Association – cyberGARDENing the city

12 Mar 2013

AA School Visiting School 2013

AA Milan Summer School

Visiting School – organized by Architectural Association with ecoLogicStudio in Milan, Italy

6 – 16 Jul 2013

cyberGARDENing the city

images from ecoLogicStudio

AA MILANO
cyber-Gardening the City

Marco Poletto and Claudia Pasquero on behalf of the Architectural Association in Milano are proud to launch the second spring/summer season with a renewed program of lectures and events leading to our International Summer School focussed on the topic of alternative FOOD and renewable ENERGY for the Urban Environment.

In the end of March we will launch our first lecture series in Milano. The AA MILANO Spring Lecture Series is part of the AA Public Program, one of the most diverse and prestigious open lectures series in the world, and it will be stages in 3 different venues across the city: the Polytechnic, the NIL28 and the Stecca degli Artigiani.
This first round of talks will end with a dedicated exhibition in the Gallery SpazioFMGperl’architecttura, opening on the 23rd of May. For updates visit: cybergardens2013.aaschool.ac.uk

Matteo Pasquinelli, a young Italian philosopher, will open the series with his Manifesto on Urban Cannibalism, setting the stage for the debate that will inform the main Summer School, the experimental design workshop taking place between the 6th and the 16th of July and involving international participants working on the theme of cyber-gardening the city; this year each team taking part to the design experiment will breed alternative urban food supply chains and renewable energy networks of algae, bacteria and urban insects; the key design instruments will be direct field work and a custom design twitter based real-time digital interface. Applications are now welcome.

images from ecoLogicStudio

Summer School Brief

As the world’s population grows at an ever faster pace and the effects of global warming threaten crops worldwide, the global reserve of food is reaching an historic low. Global metropolis like Milan will soon find themselves in a condition of shortage, perhaps not dissimilar to the one experienced in the past in periods of war or siege, where food and energy were either absent or unaffordable to the majority.

Philosopher Matteo Pasquinelli claims that it is in this periods that the culinary art has demonstrated its ability to expand the horizons of edibility by reinventing the urban landscape as a potentially productive one; in periods of shortages the art of cultivating the nutritious potentials of what Gilles Clement calls the “third landscape” elevated itself to a gastro-political art of resistance towards the enemy and of building a new collective identity.

Such practice posses a radical attitude that goes far beyond the current fashion for urban allotment and farmer markets in the sense that has the capability to reinvent our perception of those interstitial ecologies that are ubiquitous in our metropolis but that escape categorisations, as they are not part of the urban techno-sphere nor they belong to the agricultural layer; they exist within out of control, invisible or neglected strata where nature escapes human control and proliferates unchecked.

This year the AA Milan will set up its urban Lab in the Milanese borough of Nil28 and will embrace this radical attitude to propose scenarios of gastro-political resistance towards the tyranny of large multinational food distributions, the classism of organic gourmet food and the threat of global supply shortage.

Studio Structure

The teaching model of the AA Summer School in Milan is grounded on the experimental tradition of the Architectural Association and on the design philosophy of ecoLogicStudio, that will curate the event and run the design workshop.
In the first 3 days of workshop our explorations will take us on a trip across unnoticed landscapes of urban algae blooming on the Milanese Navigli, of mosquito hunting in Novara and of bacteria fermentations in Gorgonzola.

The design studio will than take its base in the Nil28 neighbourhood where the aspiring cyber-gardeners will be able to explore and invent new urban cultivation practices by combining Applets design and real-time urban mapping with 1:1 scale prototyping. Dedicated real-time mapping and prototyping design clusters will be interfaced and interrelated during the workshop giving to all participants the opportunity to experiment with multiple techniques and challenge different aspects of the brief.

The final outcome will be an urban cultivation digital interface involving the participation of the neighbourhood and a series of speculative prototypes testing novel cultivation practices or urban recipes.
The 10 days workshop will be supported by a series of seminars with invited specialists and dedicated algorithmic design and prototyping tutorials. The seminars will be held in the evening and will feature guests from the world of digital design and prototyping, agronomy and food science, landscape design and computational design, journalism and curatorial practices.

Enrolment

The deadline for applications is 30th June 2013. All participants travelling from abroad are responsible for securing any visa required. After payment of fees, the AA can provide a letter confirming participation in the workshop.

The AA Visiting School requires a fee of £695 per participant, which includes a £60 visiting Student Membership. If you are already a member, the total fee will be reduced automatically by £60 by the online payment system. Early enrolment and group discounts apply. for more info please visit our website:
cybergardens2013.aaschool.ac.uk

Team
AA Milan Directors: Claudia Pasquero and Marco Poletto
Scientific committee: Luca Molinari and Simona Galateo
Computational Design Tutor: Andrea Bugli

AA School Visiting School – 2012

AA Milan Summer School

Visiting School – organized by Architectural Association with ecoLogicStudio in Milan, Italy

7 – 17 Jul 2012

cyberGARDENing the city

The teaching model of this Summer School is grounded on the experimental tradition of the Architectural Association and on the design philosophy of ecoLogicStudio, that will curate the event and co-run the design workshop.

‘nature does not exist’ ecoLogicStudio @ Cornell University:

images : student_Sonny Eric Xu

After setting up our Urban LAB in the Frigoriferi Milanesi Art Complex, we will embark in a series of exploration trips and “gardening” experiments around the emergent bio-farming network of Milano Parco Sud, site to 2015World Expo; inspired by the achievements of the Slow Food movement, we will radicalize their efforts through the deliberate contamination of the traditional and the futuristic, the natural and the bioengineered.

Our ambition with AA Italy ‘cyber-GARDENing the city’ is to enjoy 10 intense days within the country with the highest concentration of culinary traditions and learn new cutting edge design techniques to manifest the possibilities of a radical interpretation of such traditions as new global bio-lifestyles.

The aspiring cyber-gardeners will be able to explore and invent new hybrid design practices by combining Applets design with distributed urban sensing and mapping, computational parametric design with hydroponic cultivation, and cutting edge digital animation with journalistic and critical narrative. These tree design clusters will be interfaced and interrelated during the workshop giving to all participants the opportunity to experiment with multiple techniques and challenge different aspects of the brief.

This final outcome will be a single 1:1 prototypical space to be set up within the lobby of our urban LAB; a space embedded with biological life, sensing potential, ecosystem narrative and real-time social networking interface; a space for the discussion and re-definition of urban agricultural services and supply chain.

More on: http://cybergardens.aaschool.ac.uk/

7 – 17 July 2012

Viapiranesi and Cascina Parco Sud

cyberGARDENing the city – Design Workshop in Milan

We grow food fast, we eat fast, we diet fast or we could say, ‘we waste fast’. What is the future of food consumption, and what form will the new urban landscape of food production take? Can we imagine environments of novel culinary exploration, engineered from a hybridisation of traditional Italian practices, rites and festivals with contemporary digital design technologies, prototyping protocols and bio-gardening techniques?

‘Cyber-GARDENing the city’ proposes a new form of bio-architectural design laboratory where multiple growing practices are explored as the means to critically assess the future of urban agriculture and its potential to evolve into new bio-architectural landscapes and radical urban lifestyles. The teaching model of the lab is grounded in the experimental tradition of the AA and the design philosophy of ecoLogicStudio, who will run the workshop.

Set within the emergent bio-farming network on the outskirts of Milan (site of the 2015 World Expo), our first productive atelier will embark on a series of ‘growing’ experiments inspired by the achievements of the Slow Food movement, but radicalising its efforts through the deliberate cross-contamination of the traditional and the futuristic, the natural and the bio-engineered.

Aspiring cyber-gardeners will be able to explore and invent new hybrid design practices by combining digital growth simulations with biological sensing, robotic actuation with hydroponic cultivation, and cutting-edge rapid prototyping with traditional crochet. These bio-architectural playgrounds will materialise as 1:1 prototypical spaces embedded with biological life, sensing and actuating potential and digital computational power.

The workshop will be supported by a series of seminars, growing sessions with invited specialists, and dedicated algorithmic modelling and prototyping tutorials. The workshop is open to students and professionals from the disciplines of architecture, urban, landscape, product and interactive design, biology, computer science and robotics. Gardening enthusiasts are welcome.

cyberGARDENing the city, Milan

Applications

The deadline for applications is 23 June 2012. Application forms and additional information are available online at:
www.aaschool.ac.uk/milan. All participants travelling from abroad are responsible for securing any visa required for entry to Italy, and are advised to contact their home embassy early. After payment of fees, the AA School can provide a letter confirming participation in the workshop.

Accommodation & Costs

The AA Visiting School requires a fee of £695 per participant, which includes a £50 Visiting Membership, payable online at:
www.aaschool.ac.uk/milan. Fees do not include flights or accommodation, but accommodation options can be advised. Students are encouraged to bring their own laptops, digital equipment and modelmaking tools. Please ensure this equipment is covered by your own insurance as the AA takes no responsibility for items lost or stolen at the workshop.

More Information

Programme Directors: Claudia Pasquero, Marco Poletto
Visiting School Director: Christopher Pierce
Visiting School Coordinator: Karina Joseph
T +44 (0)20 7887 4014 / F +44 (0)20 7414 0782 / E visitingschool@aaschool.ac.uk
Architectural Association School of Architecture
36 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3ES

Programme Site: http://cybergardening.aaschool.ac.uk

AA Milan Summer School images / information from ecoLogicStudio ltd

Location: Milan, Italy

AA School Events